The present invention relates generally to electrical contacts, and in particular to a system and method for providing remote contact quality maintenance.
Electrical contacts may be either ‘wet’ type or ‘dry’ type contacts. Dry contacts often have gold or special plating with small enough or sharp enough contact points to create a small point of gas-tight connection. This small point prevents dust buildup and corrosion in the presence of very low contact currents.
Wet contacts depend upon enough current through the contact to create a small melted ‘wet’ spot between the contacts where a gas tight connection occurs. This often requires several milliamps (mA) to tens of mA's to maintain the ‘wet’ point. If the current through the ‘wet’ style contact is too low, the contact can eventually start to develop increased contact resistance and can become intermittent, which may result in circuit malfunctions. Because of this, applications that include, for example, larger wet contacts with ‘auxiliary contacts’ are not always made for low current conditions. It is desirable to minimize the current needed to drive wet contactor circuits, while maintaining the integrity of the wet contacts.